🤳I Lost Thousands on Social Media
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I went out to dinner on Saturday and was seated next to a table of influencers. One had a digital camera around her neck, and another had her phone mounted on a tripod.
I couldn’t take my eyes off them.
Film from this angle, one of them said, handing off her phone. And don’t stop filming until I say so.
Her friend took the phone, angled it up high, and pressed record.
Okay, hey everyone! It’s Shelby, and I’m eating at Lilia, which is so hard to get a reservation at, ughhh. But I’m here and about to taste the arancini balls. Look at these things! Okay, let’s give them a try.
She bit into the cheesy ball and made exaggerated sound effects before fully chewing.
Okay, slay. These are a 9.5. You won’t find better! Okay, stop recording me now, she said, grabbing her phone and rewatching the video.
She was happy with the video but not with the food.
These things are actually disgusting, she told her friends. Like, should we send them back because, ew?
They had no idea I was listening, but they also didn’t care. They weren’t really at dinner; they were at work, getting paid in free food as long as they posted about it on Instagram.
She uploaded the video to her story, tagged the restaurant, and wrapped the arancini ball in a napkin before sticking it in her purse.
What the heck was that? That, my friend, is the life of influencers.
👋Welcome to the Monday Pick-Me-Up. I know this because I was an influencer until I kind of quit. It’s cost me though, thousands of dollars and followers, but It’s been worth it. Here’s why.
Ps. Next Monday is Memorial Day and I’ve decided to skip the newsletter and give the old inbox a little break. I’ll be back with a new newsletter on June 3rd <3
🤳I Lost Thousands on Social Media
For so many years, my happiness was tied to my two main obsessions: making as much money as I possibly could and gaining as many social media followers as possible.
Figuring out how to make those numbers spike was all I cared about. My self-worth, mood, confidence levels - everything hinged on achieving "success" in those two areas. It was absolutely soul-sucking.
I blame the money part mostly on the extreme pressures that secretly come along with being an entrepreneur and not having a steady paycheck coming from any business but your own.
I tie the social media part to being a writer and understanding that without an audience or platform, you won't land an agent or a six-figure book deal. I've talked all about that before.
So around 2015, when posting the intimate details of your life became a thing for people to do on Facebook and then Instagram, there I was, doing it too.
I was an online influencer for almost a decade before I realized just how much it was making me miserable.
I love sharing my life with strangers. It's why I've been doing this newsletter for almost a decade too. But it started to creep me out how being a content creator on social media means that you show people a very rehearsed, strategic, calculated, and often untrue version of your life.
Nothing you see on social media is 100% the truth.
Most of what you see from influencers is polished, paid for, pre-recorded, or simply not their entire reality. Some influencers go into credit card debt trying to life a lifestyle they can’t afford so their audience views them a certain way. Others are performing for the camera. Once it goes off, they are not at all that person.
I noticed that even the way I talked, from my facial expressions to my voice, started to feel so unnatural. It wasn't how I spoke in real life at all. I was becoming this social media version of Jen Glantz, and I didn't like that person at all because she wasn’t quirky or awkward like I am in real life. She didn’t wear her acne scars with pride, She knew how to triple-filter them out of her posts.
What the world was seeing wasn’t who I truly was. I like who I am! But it didn’t get me as many followers as this upgraded version of Jen Glantz did.
When you follow an influencer, you aren’t following a real person, you’re following the character they’ve become for their own show.
I'd film a story with a big smile, talking about my plans for the day, and the story would upload. Then I'd sit back on the couch, lick my lipstick off, and mindlessly scroll TikTok for another 45 minutes. The world thought I was CRUSHING MY GOALS. I was crushing my brain instead.
I became cautious about what I shared with the world. For example, I've worked so hard to build genuine friendships, I never posted about hanging out with my friends on social media. I didn't want them to feel like I was using them or that I valued my social media life more than our time together.
Years ago, a close friend said: You spend a lot of time alone. Why don’t you ever hang out with people? "
What are you talking about? I asked her and then read off my social calendar from the previous week.
Oh wow. You post so much on social media that I really thought I knew your every move, every day. I had no idea you hung out with friends?
Last August, someone in my life passed away young. I started obsessing over this death. I didn’t want my own life to continue down such a vapid road. I didn’t waste my life chasing likes and views. More than anything, I didn’t want my daughter to grow up with a mom always speaking in an influencer voice to the camera.
So I stopped posting on social media. It was the first time I ever did.
Last time it happened, I was forced.
In 2017, a few days before my second book came out, my Instagram was hacked and deleted. I had spent years building up my Instagram. I had tons of followers and thousands of posts. In seconds, I lost the entire account.
Adam, something is seriously wrong. I turned to him and grabbed his phone. I went on his Instagram and saw that my profile was gone. All the photos were deleted. The username was changed. The profile picture was not me.
Minutes later, the marketing associate at Simon and Schuster called. I sent her call straight to voicemail.
Hey, Jen. Call me back! We’re calling to chat about Instagram ads for the book. They are reading to go live today on your account.
My book was about to be released, and a big reason why Simon & Schuster agreed to publish it and offered me a six-figure deal was because of my Instagram platform. But now, that platform was gone.
Just take me to the hospital, I said to Adam, folding in half. I think my entire heart is going to explode.
While he was trying to do everything he could to contact Instagram, I was packing a suitcase. I had planned to toss my phone in a garbage disposal and runaway. "
I should have realized it then, but my obsession with social media was so deep-rooted. It was my livelihood and the reason one of the biggest opportunities of my life came my way. In 2013, every agent told me I couldn't get a book deal without a platform, so I devoted every ounce of myself to building one. Now, three days before the release of the book I sacrificed so much for, my Instagram account was gone.
And you want to know whose fault it was that it got hacked?
It was mine. It was allllll mine.
I was using a bot service to gain followers, which also added some fake ones. The service was sketchy and it had all the information it needed to takeover my account and sell it to a hacker. That’s what happened.
Eventually, I got my account back, but all my photos were erased, and many of my followers were gone.
I started from scratch, promising myself this time would be different.
For a while, it was. But eventually, I was back to selling books and courses, trying to grow my platform, until social media once again defined every aspect of my life.
I wasn’t actually living my life. No influencer is. I was working for an audience of strangers living the life they wanted for me. I was a puppet.
Life was happening around it but I was too busy looking down at my phone to care.
Then August happened. Postpartum and tough baby sleep regressions knocked me around so hard that when I recovered enough to feel okay again, I didn’t want to show up on social media anymore.
I wanted to live my own real life without a live audience.
Since then, I've posted only a little on social media. The world has no idea where I am every day. It feels weird. For so many years they did. I don’t take photos or record videos as much. I’m experiencing adventures, emotions, big life moments, and keeping them all to myself. When I’m ready, I post them here.
It’s cost me thousands. I’ve passed up humongous brand deals (like getting paid $18,000 to get Botox and post about it). I lose followers every day because my account is in a lull.
I don't think I'll regret this pause. I'm not sure if I'll ever fully return to being an influencer.
For now, I'm content doing what I've always wanted: sharing my life with strangers in this tiny corner of the internet, showing up exactly as I am without pretending. We don't pretend here; it's too early on a Monday morning to even try.
Ps. This is what I hoped social media would be for me, a place to share what’s real, and I’m grateful to be here with you. Thank you for supporting my adventure and, more intimately, my life.
⚡Instant Pick Me Ups
📚: How fun is this wall bookshelf? Added this to my list of items to buy for my dream apartment one day.
👙: You know how workout dresses are a thing? An even bigger “thing” are swim dresses. You can wear these dresses to…swim. But also they are cute for lounging at a summer BBQ or running errands. I’m loving
This bright pink one
This tie one in the color whimsical
This floral one is fun
💄: I’m obsessed with this bronzer. I brush it all over my face and it makes my makeup look smooth and more natural. I get compliments on my makeup every time I wear it. It’s so good that it’s sold out most places but I found it here.
🎶: A really fun song about being a new mom. It sounds like my girl Kesha wrote it but it’s from someone else.
👟:Adam got these sneakers and has said a million times that these are all the only sneakers he wants to wear for the rest of this life. He’s influencing me to grab a pair too.
😮 Progress Report:
People will doubt you. You can’t control that or change their mind. Don’t waste your energy. It won’t be worth it. But you can ignore their doubt and continue to work hard on what you are creating for yourself. You can continue to be your own cheerleader. You can continue to do things that seem so far-fetched. You can continue to make magic happen because magic is just this blaring voice inside of you that says: oh no, we’re not giving up yet. I exhale when those doubters come back around and say: Jen, I can’t believe you pulled this off. It’s quite shocking. And then I simply say the words that kept me going every single day that I kept going without them: I never doubted I wouldn’t pull this off and that’s the only reason we’re here.
My predictions - based on nothing except my own pulse on social media - is that people will start spending more time reading than scrolling videos/photos/stories. Newsletters and Reddit forums will become more popular. I spend a lot of my free time reading newsletters and browsing Reddit.
My friend and I spent the week doing a health challenge. We cut out dairy, gluten, and sugar. I really needed a reset and I enjoyed doing this because it guided me toward healthier options and I felt like I had a lot more energy. Some of my favorite things to eat during this reset were:
Cocojune plain vegan yogurt. I added fresh strawberries and cinnamon.
Ancient Harvest pasta. This is my go-to. It’s delicious.
Homemade trail mix. I kept a jar of this near my desk for a healthy snack.
Protein smoothies. I never had it as a meal replacement but I’d have half with breakfest and half as a snack in the middle of the day.
I’m going to continue this challenge for one more week!
The two-bedroom apartment saga continues, friends. If you're new, here's the TLDR: We live in a perfect 1-bedroom in Brooklyn and don’t want to move. A similar 2-bedroom costs $8,000, no exaggeration. We've been trying to get a 2-bedroom in our rent-stabilized building, but no one ever leaves. When an apartment opens, the leasing office emails all 200 people on the waiting list, and the first responder gets it. Last year, we missed an apartment by one minute. This Tuesday, we got the email at 7:20 pm, replied by 7:25 pm, and celebrated, thinking we were first. But we didn't get it. The leasing company changed the process: now you have to refresh their website until they post a link randomly between midnight and 9 am. We missed it. To avoid this again, I set alerts for page updates. Hopefully, technology helps because it feels like Gemma, Adam, Goofy, and I will be in this 1-bedroom forever :)
Why you’re getting this: I'm Jen Glantz and this is The Monday Pick-Me-Up newsletter. I've been sending it every Monday, for 9-years, to thousands of awesome humans, just like you. Thank you for letting this email live in your inbox. It truly makes my heart explode with joy.
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Thank you. I can relate.
Thanks for staying real Jen. This is so refreshing. Heartbreaking and hopeful at the same time. Much love❤️